Malaysian and Thai Islands

We had a nice flight to Langkawi and got a taxi to our hotel, we had a room with a bathroom, nice! lol. Langkawi is a cool place, there were lots of restaurants and little shops. The beach itself was amazing, we spent four nights. One was spent celebrating Emma's Birthday! We had a walk along the street trying to find some sort of nice bar to no avail! We were steadily making our way back to the hotel when we heard music coming from the beach and found that THAT's where all the nightlife is! From Langkawi we booked a ferry and onward transport upto the Thai island of Koh Lanta. This made for a pretty long journey!

We were picked up from the hotel in Langkawi at 7.30 from a ferry at 9, when we arrived in Satun, the first of the Thai Islands and we're ferried on to a pick-up truck with benches, they're called Saammlaws! This took us as far as a bus station where we were told to get on a bus so we waited until 12 when we boarded this bus which was going to take us to Krabi. When we were boarding the bus the ticket lady made us all sit in seats according to where we were going which consequented in moving nearly everyone around, it was LOL-worthy! The journey to Krabi was 2 hours then we were to get a minibus the next 2 hours to Koh Lanta. Between Krabi and Koh Lanta we were sat at the back of this minibus and when we eventually arrived in Koh Lanta we were the last people left on the bus after a while and the driver started making all these drop offs of deliveries and was getting paid every time he stopped to drop something off. By this point we were very exasperated!

However, when we eventually arrived at Bee Bee's bungalows it was like a dream! We asked the guy where a cash machine was because it was our first stop in Thailand and we didn't have and Baht and he said 'slow, slow! Don't worry!' So, for the next 5 nights we stayed in a bungalow by the beach (under 15GBP for all of us! :)) and did alot of reading. I finished Oliver Twist and read both Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass...'Why is a raven like a writing desk?' LOLz. The people at Bee Bee's were really friendly, it was run by this guy called an who every morning spent about half an hour playing with a boomerang on the beach, hitting various trees and bungalows and the occasional near miss of a guest! lol.

Next stop was Ko Phi Phi, where they filmed the beach, the prices were higher and it was FULL of british yobs and all sorts. When we arrived the guy showing us to our hotel carried our bags all the way in the mid-day heat all the way on this trolley thing! By the time we got there we were boiling and he got us some water, NICE. We ate in this bookshop-cafe before checking into our room, after which we spent the afternoon on the beach, even more perfect than Koh Lanta, check facebook for the pics!

The following day we woke up ready to part with some cash in order to sea the secluded spots of Ko Phi Phi Don and it's uninhabited, neighbouring island, Ko Phi Phi Ley. However, when we came out of our room the guy from the hotel (a different guy to bag guy!lol) he said there was going to be a TSUNAMI! But we were safe because our hotel was up from the beach, so we sat waiting, it was very surreal, we had no idea what was going on, then a police announcer came round saying there was no risk of tsunami. So, we had some breakfast and booked a boat trip (we weren't too worried because apparently they've had 3 tsunami warnings in the last week with nothing happening!) The boat tour we got was with two other couples and a family, we all squeezed into this longtail boat and set off out of the main bay. The first stop was Monkey Bay, where there are monkeys on the rocks, people crowded round taking photos and stuff until one big monkey started attacking this little one, it was brutal! Then, one guy tried to touch one of the monkeys and he slapped him and ran after him, grabbing at his leg! Everyone ran pretty swiftly, the monkeys had TURNED! lol. Also, we haven't had a vaccination against Rabies, so were staying well back! We then went to Ko Phi Phi Ley and stopped in one little cove to swim for a while and then another one where we snorkelled. The snorkelling was really cool, there was this massive fish with all different coloured patches on it as well as a big pouty mouth! Also, the boat-man threw crisps in for the fish around the boat and these stripey fish surrounded all of us! Finally, we stopped at Maya Bay, the beach from 'The Beach,' it has got to be the best beach i have ever seen, the sand was like powder and the water was bright turquoise! On the way back we saw the sunset over the horizon, it was an eventful day! lol.

We woke up in the morning and checked out, it was a BOILING hot day and so we were relieved to hear that we could come back the hotel and get our bags taken down to the port in order to get our ferry upto Phuket. We had time to waste so sat in the bookshop-cafe where they served the most amazing sandwich, it had cheese, cream cheese, bacon, ham, onion lettuce and tomato! Then we boarded the ferry and were pretty euphoric when we realised it was air-conditioned! We arrived at our Phuket hotel at about half 4 and immediately did washing so that it would be dry by this morning, there were three washing lines fashioned using chairs bags, windows and a wardrobe door, as well as some strategically placed fans. We turned the room into quite and obstacle course! lol. After this we went out to book a bus the Bangkok and managed to find the bus terminal where we realised we could haggle the price! We got one for about 11GBP which leaves at 6.3o tonight and arrives at 6AM tommorow in Bangkok. Then we went in search of food and wandered around thirsty and hungry for TWO hours, Phuket town seems pretty empty and is lacking in amenities! We ended up in an expensive italian where we just ate some some starters and water and then headed off to bed!

The Next few days, when we get to Bangkok we have one night and then a flight the following afternoon in Cambodia, however, we have accidentally booked a flight on Thai New Year where Bangkok turns into a giant waterfight! Fingers crossed all will go to plan with making it the airport and Phom Penh on the 13th!

xxx
(sorry to all the adults for all the spelling and grammatical mistakes!)